Page 67 of Prince of Masks
Oliver considers me, a frown knitting his brow under the flickering lights of the sun that dares dance over his olive-oil complexion.
“That’s why you wanted to come to the casino.” He decides it, doesn’t ask, just decides it to be true. “The company.”
With a sigh, I toss aside my shades. They land on my open bag, then are quickly followed by the book I wasn’t reading.
Oliver watches as I push to stand, then stretch my arms over my head. The linen pants are wrinkled around my legs, the shirt as crumpled as my face.
“I’m right, yes?”
I drop my stretch and let my arms sag at my sides. “It’s not really any of your business.”
His eyes harden, they follow me as I fall back onto the bench against the railing. “Everything you do is my business, Liv.”
I stir almond milk into my tea. “How do you figure that?”
“I’m to inherit,” he says through a yawn. “Everything. That includes you.”
The glower I shoot at him isn’t as playful as the one he is quick to return to me.
I toss down the teaspoon. It clatters on the tray.
I bring the teacup closer to me. “Not if I marry.”
Oliver’s complexion glares in the sunrays.
His face tightens into something of a grimace. “Not one of the gentry, I hope,” he says, then pauses to make anughsound. “Awful company to have at dinner.”
“Dinner?” I hike my brows. “I’ll be clear, Oliver, since maybe that tanning oil leaked into your eyes and clouded your perspective.”
A jolt jerks his shoulder, a chesty laugh that he doesn’t release, but his grin is ear to ear. “And what’s this clarity?”
“I won’t be around once I’m married.”
His eyes shutter, a glimmer of shade flickers over the emerald. His grin fades until he’s just staring at me with a pinched brow.
“I’m desperate for a husband,” I say and set down the teacup, “because he will be my escape. From Dray, from this aristos bullshit—and from you. There will be no dinners that you’ll suffer a gentry’s company, because I will not have dinner with you.”
There is no rage storming in his eyes, no disgust to curl his mouth, he simply frowns at me with a furrowed brow and a thick quiet wisped around him.
Oliver almost looks sad.
I snatch my tote and hoist it over my shoulder.
The look I spare him is ugly, then I march across the deck for the saloon.
The sun glares out the corner of my eye. It lures in my focus; I turn to see Dray climbing up the ladder, onto the deck.
His hands are fisted on the metal bars, his upper body glistening like polished oak. His glacier gaze pins me, fast, like he has a built-in radar for me.
Sometimes, I think he does.
Sometimes, I suspect Dray has a niggle in his mind, an inkling in his magic, the essence of his mother’s print, and it’s all aimed at me like a sword to the throat.
He draws away from the ladder and, without tearing his gaze from me, he reaches for the bar and snatches his towel.
I turn my cheek to him and shove through the glass doors, into the saloon. The relief is instant. Not only to have a space to myself, but the hit of the air conditioner is like walking onto the grounds of the academy after a sweltering day in a sauna.
I drop my tote to the floorboards, then drag myself to the bench that lines the far wall. There, I fall onto my side.
